His point that the informal Code is effectively a barrier to entry to new players in the market is not misplaced, but the muted response from the outsourcers themselves tells a tale of hard won improvements in workplace relations as the market has grown. Reduced friction when taking over new business is itself a removal of a significant barrier to entry, and surely a long term benefit. The public sector outsourcing industry – and its workforce – is a much more sophisticated, almost symbiotic, creature than it was in the days of the last Conservative administration.

In addition, greater value for the taxpayer could come from removing barriers like reducing the risk aversion of local government to using new players; easing the complexity of Competitive Dialogue (responsibility for which now sits inside Francis Maude’s empire); or trying to compensate for the advantage of the in situ contractor when contracts are renewed.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the removal of the biggest financial barrier of them all: pensions. Lord Hutton’s commission is surely going to look at how this barrier affects the costs of outsourcing, but the Government should tread carefully if it thinks it can use the barriers to entry argument as a means to tackle the pension deficit via the outsourcing industry.

Handing power to local communities means by-passing the town hall, people argue. Other people have argued that devolving power and responsibilities to individuals and communities will not be compatible with reducing the government deficit.

And it’s true that many in local government are uncomfortable with the idea of handing over powers to local people. Some feel that democratic accountability is being compromised, or that they will lose control of services.

I think that local government has a central role to play in the Big Society. It is a role which might challenge some of our existing ideas of local democracy. Councillors will have to re-define their role and see themselves not as spokesmen for the Council.

The primary role of councillors must be accountability to the community for local public services whether delivered directly, commissioned or scrutinised. Councillors will need to move right into the centre of our communities, exercising democratic accountability for all local public services whether they are delivered by the council, police, health service or job centres.

We have to shift from seeing these as “our” services to seeing them as services that we have to hold to account for quality and cost on behalf of those we represent.

We will also need to be willing to learn from other organisations. Councillors who have represented their wards for many years, or even decades, may feel they know all there is to know about the needs of residents. But there is always more we can learn from small voluntary organisations which are run and governed by the very people who use their services.

In some ways the Big Society will provide a wider and more challenging role to local government. Councillors will need to be engaged with all the services delivered in their area. They will need to listen to the views of residents and be willing to devolve appropriate decision-making to residents. But they will also need to ensure that they carry out their democratic functions on behalf of residents, challenging and scrutinising all public services delivered in an area to ensure residents receive an excellent and good value service.

He had been asked a question about protection for the previous administration’s guarantee of one-to-one tuition in schools. Laws response – refusing to defend the commitment – got right to the heart of the question of ‘entitlements’ as a mechanism for public service delivery, a subject addressed last week by NLGN’s report Making sense of entitlement: Improving public services without performance guarantees.

Our report highlighted the extent to which entitlements had become a key principle for ensuring minimum standards of public service provision under the Labour Government. By stipulating maximum waiting times in the NHS; the guarantee of one-to-one tuition in schools; or free care at home for disabled people they sought to create a framework that would ensure certain particular outcomes and service quality for citizens.

This new approach was undoubtedly well-intentioned. The Smarter Government paper of 2009 makes clear that one of its key drivers was to make service providers more accountable to the public. Citizens, armed with these new guarantees, would judge the standards of their local school, hospital, Police service or council, rather than civil servants reviewing performance against government targets from behind a desk in Whitehall.

However, the entitlement-based approach was also inherently flawed in many ways. Uniform national entitlements lacked the subtlety required in the current financial climate or the sensitivity to respond to different circumstances in different areas across the country.

It is questionable whether guaranteeing every older person in the country free bus travel, regardless of their ability to pay represents the most judicious use of limited public money.

What is more, in the NHS, maximum waiting times are susceptible to manipulation and can focus staff on processing the patient according to the centrally-ordained timeframe rather than giving them the best possible treatment.

Therefore, while entitlements make a convenient political narrative, there is debate about how much good they do. David Laws’ point in the House of Commons debate was that while the guarantee of one-to-one tuition is to go, the schools budget will be maintained for 2010/11 and thus the quality of schooling will improve.

If a school is given an identical pot of money to that which it had previously received but with no requirement that a portion of it is used to fulfil a government’s political commitment, then that should enable them to provide a better service, rather than a worse one. The same principle applies in the case of most entitlements: mandating uniform guarantees is an effective political narrative – “we will ensure no hospital patient waits no longer than 4 hours in A&E” – but it is tantamount to telling professional staff with a working knowledge of local needs how to use their resources.

Allowing greater local flexibility is a sensible stance to adopt, and the coalition’s position is to be welcomed. But if entitlements are to be abandoned, what safeguard of performance quality and accountability should emerge in their place?

NLGN’s report recommends a series of negotiated agreements between local authorities and central government, outlining the intended outcomes from public spending in their area based on the council’s knowledge of priorities on the ground, and the wider framework of national aspirations.

This should then be backed up by an effective scrutiny system based on openness and accountability. Using the internet to publicise public service commitments and an inspection process that takes user-experience as its starting point would be initial steps in the right direction. Extending local government’s remit to give it greater control over local public services such as healthcare and policing would also greatly strengthen both local providers right to determine their own priorities, and the public’s ability to hold them to account through democratic elections.

Such measures would give public service management a localist dimension, and ensure that services remain transparent and accountable to users. These are the key principles that the coalition must bear in mind as they seek to re-shape the future of public services.

The increased turnout due to the general election helped Labour in its stronger areas regain councillors who had previously paid the price for long term national incumbency. However, the Labour campaign should be credited for the strategic decision made on where to draw the front line. Unlike the Conservatives in 1997, who spread their resources too thin and tried to fight a wider board, Labour fought the battles it could win and targeted resource on areas which would provide most value for their investment.

David Cameron and the Conservatives had by the far the best of the general election results although in the locals saw 12 councils slip from their control. In reality this does little to change the national picture of council control with the Conservatives still the dominate force in Town Hall politics having more councillors than Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined. This is unlikely to change dramatically over the next couple of years due to the electoral cycle but their continued poor performance in the met boroughs remains a concern. The lack of sitting councillors is debilitating to building local associations and ultimately mounting a serious challenge for the parliamentary seats in those areas. Maybe the plan for directly elected mayors in a number of these places will act as an antidote to this and provide the Conservatives with a much needed foot in the door.

All in all, a set of fairly inconclusive results locally for what turned out to be a thoroughly inconclusive result nationally.

The temptation for Labour to run the ‘springboard for success’ sound bite must be palpable in light of their London success but I would suggest restraint. It’s clear that their core vote is coming back together in their strongholds but this is no more than the beginning of the gradual realignment of traditional support. The district council elections next year will provide a real test for all political parties but especially Labour who control only six district councils to the Conservatives one hundred and thirty five. If we see major inroads in 2011 then maybe its time to talk about ‘springboards’ and ‘success’ but until then we should remember that whilst Labour had a good night locally the Conservatives by no means had a bad one.

Good policy and best practice do not come on the back of reacting to the latest tragedy, so I have steered my recommendations away from so-called “improvements” to regulation, targets or performance management (the NSDU seems to have that well covered!). Over-regulation also diminishes personal responsibility and suggests – misleadingly – that “the state” can and should be responsible for everything.

Instead, I focus on what we can do to improve and sustain front-line practitioners and their practice standards. ICS has shown us how NOT to use technology to best advantage – I’m suggesting that harnessing technology to training developments is potentially more fruitful.

It’s a common-place to say that practitioners in this work (and of course, I would include police officers and health visitors) have to go into some pretty dark places of the human condition. There is much very good research evidence on which practitioners can call to help in skilful assessment – but the moment you are behind the front door, you can be dealing with chaos dysfunction and, more than occasionally, aggression, threat and deceit.

What I’m suggesting is more than just role-playing, helpful though that can be. Kit out a “training house” with high-quality audio-visual equipment, with well-researched scripts and with ‘proper’ actors and we can create any number of life-like scenarios in which practitioners can be exposed to difficult situations, coached and supervised through them ‘live’, to become more adept and more confident at handling and processing the bombardment of different, sometimes conflicting, “messages” we have all encountered out at one time or another, almost to point of feeling overwhelmed.

People will be helped in a relatively safe environment to develop better assessment skills and personal strategies, to better assess risk dynamically. We can look to academic colleagues to help us with this (in Kent, we already know this is the case) and other agencies and professions have things they can offer – and learn – as well (this is the case with Kent Police).

Given the growing burden of regulation and prescription, some creativity in learning how best to do this most difficult of jobs, is not asking for too much, is it?

This builds on a great quantity of much-heralded research, from the Lyons Inquiry to the Quirk Review, which set out great aspirations but led to very little in the way of real action. More recently, a great deal has been said by all parties about mutuals, powers of competence, and other eye-catching initiatives.

However, we’ve heard much less about the basics of local government – the important measures that really make a difference to people’s daily lives. I believe that this focus on the practical is what’s really missing from many of these discussions. Great strategic aspirations are important, but they need foundations: the smaller and less glamorous changes that together will make a real difference in residents’ daily lives.

The aim of the Living City Manifesto is to address this gap. It sets out five ‘bills’ that a new government could adopt quickly to demonstrate its commitment to empowering local government and local communities. We propose both fundamental changes and smaller, incremental improvements to the way in which government works with us to improve local quality of life.

Our proposals are based on the experience and knowledge that we have gained whilst delivering top quality services to the people of central London, under our corporate Living City programme. The Westminster Works programme, for example, has helped support more than 1000 of our residents back into work. The manifesto outlines how we can build on this example to give local authorities a much stronger role in delivering efficient and effective employment services to their communities.

Similarly, the experience that we have gained in managing one of the UK’s busiest road networks has led us to propose new approaches to managing the street through a dedicated Streetscape Bill.

I want this manifesto to lead to a closer and more co-operative relationship between central and local government. Local government needs to ensure that it doesn’t simply complain about restriction and control without offering any solutions – just as central government needs to recognise the successes of local councils with a real shift in control. We’re seeking the ability to control the services that we offer – and we’re willing to take responsibility for the results.

The coming decade, with declining public faith in government and growing pressure on finance, will place greater pressures on all levels of government. To meet the challenge we must work more closely together, sharing our distinctive strengths to deliver our common goals of empowered, responsible, successful communities.

The Living City Manifesto will be formally launched on 17th March 2010. For more information, please see www.westminster.gov.uk/livingcity or contact Liam Brooker, lbrooker1@westminster.gov.uk.

The creation of a new Enterprise and Innovation Fund is designed to stimulate business and investment, and will be used to offer a range of financial grants to businesses over the next three years. Three separate grants are being offered:

• Regeneration Grant – equivalent of up to 50% of the first year’s National Non Domestic Rates, and aimed at creative businesses, engineering firms and businesses using or developing low carbon or renewable energy technology,
  
• Development Grant – up to a maximum of £20,000, available for projects that are developing workspace for creative, design and engineering sectors,
  
• Business Start Up Grant – covering up to 50% of eligible start-up costs for new businesses in Gateshead to help with the purchase of productive equipment, ICT equipment including specialist software, other office equipment and improvements or alterations to business premises.

The new grants will put £250,000 into local businesses for the next three years, offering a valuable financial cushion and helping to boost developer confidence at a time when many are risk averse. This is aimed to provide businesses with the competitive edge they need when the recession ends.

A range of other measures have also been implemented to support businesses and communities to manage the impact of the economic downturn as part of the 10 Point Plan for Economic Resilience. These include:

• Accelerating the Council’s £160 million capital programme and improving the pace of major regeneration projects
  
• In partnership with Gateshead College, establishment of the North East Apprenticeship Company, which is putting in place measures to increase apprenticeships in the North East by 1,360 by 2013
  
• Development of the ‘Starter for Ten’ initiative, which has transformed a redundant town centre building into a thriving creative cluster for small businesses through the provision of rent-free workspace
  
• A range of activities to help residents remain active and healthy through designation of 2010 as Active and Healthy Year, and the successful achievement of the European City of Sport 2010
  
• Building confidence and profile in Gateshead as a world class business location through the launch of Digital Summer 2010, which will showcase the best talent and technology to local, regional and national audiences.

Our calculations identified 3025 hectares of vacant “brownfield” land – owned by the public sector and not yet allocated for any specific use – in urban areas or within 500 metres of a built-up area. However, more than half of “brownfield” land is privately owned and so we called for private landowners to also be included in any scheme.

Last week, with very little fanfare, John Denham and Hilary Benn implemented our proposals and announced a new national community land bank, which will act as a broker between both public and private land-holders and community groups who want somewhere to grow food. This is a big step forward and it could potentially help thousands more people grow their own fruit and veg.

All parts of the public sector should get involved, but the success of the initiative will be largely reliant on big private land owners signing-up to the scheme, as the top 1% of landowners own 70% of land in the UK. Therefore we urge the Government to reserve the option of empowering communities to temporarily lease small plots of unused land from these big landowners on a compulsory basis at a later date, if they do not voluntary opt-in to the scheme.

Hopefully the social conscience of the nation’s largest private landowners will suffice, but if by chance you happen to be one of them and need convincing, you should know that allotments can…

[deep breath]

…improve people’s quality of life, prevent social exclusion, increase physical exercise, encourage a nutritious diet, support mental health, combat stress and help people relax, teach new life skills and the importance of deferred gratification, give individuals self-esteem, reconnect people with the food they eat, educate citizens about healthy food and environmental stability, tackle carbon emissions, reduce food packaging, support more sustainable waste management, conserve biodiversity, facilitate social interaction, build cohesive communities, strengthen social ties and networks, reduce reoffending and crime and secure our nation’s food supplies.

If you need another reason – I’ve consulted some vegetable sowing charts and, for most of England, March is the time for allotmenteers to plant seeds for their broad beans, turnips, spring onions, rocket, broccoli radishes, leeks, onions, carrots, brussels sprouts, artichockes, parsley, shallots, spinach, cauliflower and beetroot. So, there is no time to waste.

The appetite for grassroots environmental action in Lambeth is huge. Over 300 people have registered as Green Community Champions. We also have the support of Environment Secretary Hilary Benn MP and celebrities such as Dizzee Rascal who has endorsed the Brixton Low Carbon Zone, another environmental scheme in the borough. When we set the scheme up we hoped to get 6 local groups established in the first year. But the response from local people has been so strong there are now 50 groups being set up. The public demand to get involved has been so huge we are now aiming to have one Green Champion for every street in Lambeth – a big aim but the scale of interest shows it’s achievable, and we believe it has the potential to bring sustainable living within the reach of every community in Lambeth.

The various groups are in constant dialogue with our Green Community Champion Co-ordinator who supports and guides the groups, not dictating what they should work on but listening to them and helping them get their ideas working. For instance the demand for ‘draught busting Saturdays’ organised by the Hyde Farm Climate Action Network is outstripping supply and we are now exploring the idea of setting up a social enterprise to cope with the demand. The Big Difference Fund shows how determined we are to work with our local communities to tackle climate change.

Lambeth’s Sustainability Action Plan 2010-2013 was approved by Cabinet on 8th February 2010 and sets out as a clear goal the ambition that ‘Lambeth’s community and businesses have the capacity, networks and support they need to help reduce their own carbon footprint’. By creating the Green Community Champions programme and making small pots of funding available we are empowering our communities to tackle climate change.

This is not a reward scheme; the approach is more carrot than stick and aims to embed good environmental behaviours. The scale of funding is relatively small, but the level of demand is huge and the way the programme harnesses the enthusiasm of local people ismaking a real difference to our borough’s efforts to tackle climate change.

For more information, please log on to www.projectdirt.com or www.lambeth.gov.uk

We called it a “refresh” because we wanted to emphasise that we were preserving what was sound and enduring from the original 1998 Compact. At the same time, we were bringing the agreement up to date with changes that have occurred in recent years in law, policy and practice, and in the general state of government/third sector relations.

The Compact is a national agreement but, of course, many of the best Compacts are local. Almost all local areas have their own Compacts governing the third sector’s relationship with local government, strategic health authorities, primary care trusts, police and other local public sector bodies. The national Compact does not apply directly to local public bodies but provides a template for Local Compacts which are negotiated and agreed at local level. We hope that people working in existing Local Compacts will look at the refreshed national agreement to see whether there is anything in it which could with advantage be imported into their Local Compact.

We all know that the next spending review is going to be an exceptionally tight one for local authorities – everyone will be asked to do the same, or more, with less. Relationships with the local third sector will be very important in achieving this. Whilst working with the third sector should never be seen as a “cheap” option, a good relationship can save time and effort, and help local authorities to provide services to people and in places they might not otherwise easily reach.

Local Compacts are key to this. They give guidance on service commissioning and budget discussions, and on consulting and involving the third sector in policy decisions. They can help advance equality in partnership with specialist third sector organisations.

At the Commission for the Compact, we are currently carrying out research into the social and economic benefits which accrue from using the Compact and how the Compact can help local authorities achieve area-based targets. We will be producing publications to help guide local authorities in these areas, including a toolkit allowing local authorities to calculate the economic and social benefits of applying the principles in their Local Compact. See www.thecompact.org.uk

Too often Local Compacts, having been signed with a fanfare, are put on the top shelf and left there. We want them to be used by public and third sector bodies to improve, by working together, the services, facilities and opportunities offered to local people.

To download a copy of the refreshed Compact, please visit:
www.thecompact.org.uk
For hard copies, please call:
0121 237 5905